Portfolio Structure

  • Lets face it. What you can do, in fact should do, is driven by how much money you have in your portfolio. The less you have, the fewer your options. If you have less than $75,000, trust me, don't do it yourself. Let a professional do it for you using mutual funds or ETF's until your portfolio has grown large enough. You don't want to lose too much by taking too many risks because starting over is extremely painful and hurts you in the long run. This is the voice of experience!
  • But once you pass that hurdle, the world of do-it-yourself investing opens up to you, letting you take control, save money, save time, and have fun. If you already have an account with a discount broker, then congratulations - you can do it. And you can do it better with www.iCanTrade.com
  • Portfolio Structure is the starting point. This is where you decide if you want to use margin to increase the amount of money you can play with. It is also the place where you decide if you want to divide up your portfolio into segments, which we call Baskets. If you have a lot of money, say $250,000, you can divide it up into as many as four Baskets. With $750,000 you can have as many as 7 Baskets.
  • Why Baskets? You have heard the old expression "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." This is the same idea. The www.iCanTrade.com approach lets you treat a basket like a mini-portfolio. You can define that Basket to resemble that asset allocation model you read about or had an independent financial advisor present to you.
  • For example, Charles Schwab has a mutual fund model portfolio service for what they term aggressive investors. That asset allocation looks like this: Large Cap Blend 23%; Large Cap Value 13%; Large Cap Growth 13% totalling 50% for Large Cap; then they have Small Cap Blend 20%; Foreign Large Blend 10%; and a second Foreign Large Blend 15%, totalling 25% for Foreign Large Cap, Blend.  Finally they have 5% in cash. These are actively managed mutual funds. For that link click here: http://www.schwab.wallst.com/public/research/mutualfunds/selectlist/selectList.asp?riskProfile=AP
  • It  has been impossible for a DIY investor to create and manage a portfolio of stocks this way. That is until www.iCanTrade.com.
  • iCanTrade.com even lets you substitute ETF's instead of mutual funds. You can do this for each or only some of the Baskets you define. If you want a little of each - stocks and ETFs - you can even decide the percentage by Basket! What is an ETF? Link to an excellent resource here: http://etfdb.com/
  • Now THAT is professional power!

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